Our weekend hapinesses

Just some cuteness from this past weekend. 

Playing piano on Daddy's ipad while her hair drys after her bath.

And of course, ten other little fingers wanted to be doing it too.

Room for both.

Joy got in on the end of Hope's story time as Joy had finished nursing before Josh was done putting Hope to bed. :o)

Thought I would get a picture of them at the beginning of the day while their dresses were still clean. :o)

Surprised? Surely not!

I think she heard "praise the Lord" on the CD that was playing...

Twirling with her curls. She loved having her hair curled to go to church. I'll have to make time to curl her hair more often. ;o)

"Please girls, Mommy wants a good shot of you together!"

LOVE the tongue, kiddo!

Ahh yes, it was that time...

Sunday night we hosted our Home Group and I'd made a cake to welcome our newest member, who was just born. I don't exactly have much in the way of decorating supplies, so the Lord gave me the idea to use a Ziploc bag for the icing bag and a butter knife for spreading the base icing. I was happy with the way both worked, though a second Ziploc bag was needed over top, as this one started popping little holes from the pressure. :o)

Not a great picture or stunning cake decorating by any means, but I had fun putting it together for the little guy... or rather, in honour of the little guy. :o)

This is one of their latest enjoyments - playing train together, or even better - with Daddy.

All ready for people...just missing the cake and ice cream. The Lord blessed our time, and our little girls did pretty well to play in their room on their own most of the night... or at least Hope did. :o) Josh was back and forth with Joy about a dozen times, but so be it. :o)

Life at home

Josh's return from Denver brought a few new treats for the girls from Grandma, one of which was this colourful tunnel.

Being the great Dad that he is, Josh showed them how you were supposed to use it.

Hope was delighted, and went through many times. Joy had fun watching and shaking the tunnel as Hopey went. I don't think Joy has gone through on her own yet, and I think it's because she would have to crawl instead of walk to get through it, and she pretty much gave up crawling for good the moment she discovered she could walk.

Saturday night I fed the girls early and let them watch a movie while Josh and I ate supper together. :o) Movies are a nice reserve for special-need-situations in our house. Then it was time for their baths and off to bed. We had to jump up from supper several times to rescue Joy who liked to stand up on the chair. Smart little cookie knows how to get down on her own too, which rather surprised Josh who had only been away for 5 days!

Next morning Hope thought she should share her cheerios and oranges with her dolly who was still drying out from the bathing experience the night before. :o)

Couldn't resist adding this one... such cute little dimples. :o)

Joy with another special treat Grandma Lorrie sent - a pair of those dolly bottles with liquid that appears to "drain" as you feed the baby. :o)

Hopey likes them too.

Just had to see if it was real... though she's never taken a bottle or soother in her life, so I don't know why she would think she'd get something out of this one. :o)

Joy loves my pots and bowls. I put them where she can reach them inside one of the lower cupboards in our kitchen so she has something she can play with when Mommy's cooking.

And she loves talking on the phone. Don't quite know what she was signing "please" for, or that the person on the other end got the message, but it was a cute shot.

Trying for all she's worth to dig that Play Dough out of the container.

Hopey and I were making bibs for her baby dolls out of that foam crafting paper you can find for cheap at the dollar store. :o)

Gulp. Yellow and denim with little eyes cuter than the adorable buttons on the sweater.

Growing up so fast, she is.

Next morning upon returning from a moment down the hall I saw a small trail of diapers coming from the change table in the nursery to the hallway door, and a train of paper towel elegantly spread across the kitchen floor. The look on Joy's face and Hope's honesty confirmed what I already knew - Joy had been exploring again. :o)

Whatever Hopey does, Joy wants to do too. So, Hopey was having a little tea time with her dolly and Joy decided she needed to join in too. I think she looks a little perturbed in this shot because I had probably just told her she needed to use the cup I gave her, not take Hopey's away.

And she loves to try new things. :o) 

I let her use up the rest of the charge on the battery on the sweeper after I've used it, figuring she'll possibly pick up some more lint from the floor while she's at it. :o)

Playtime with little friend Micah, whose Mommy and Daddy came over for games with us.

Little kids are the best.

"Val (Micah's Mom) are you sure I need to sit her for another picture? I think I'm done with this sitting business..."

On cold winter days a perfect thing to do is make a tent indoors and let your kids have at it all morning long. Old bed sheets make great tent material! The good thing about the tent being made over top of the kitchen table is that lunchtime provides an obvious and natural time for it to be cleaned up again. :o) Hope had so many toys and books hauled under there I had to get her to clear a bunch away so I could sit and read to her in the tent. :o)

Mmmmmaybe we've been cooped up indoors for too long. To the delight of all, it was discovered that Joy still fits in the dolly stroller. Hope took her around and around and around and around the house in it after nap time one afternoon. I thought Joy had long outgrown the dolly stroller, but when I saw pictures of a friend's kids doing it I thought I should let our girls try it too! :o) 

When I would take Joy out, she would whimper and then nod her head "yes" when I asked her if she wanted to go back in again.

Made a little tunnel out of the tent bed sheet for their after supper playtime.

Oh yes - it works the other way too! Hope's about as narrow as Joy is wide, just with longer legs, which she happily tucked up so she could get a ride too.

Girl Time

We were home for a week before Josh took off for five day a business trip to Denver. We missed him a lot, but we had some great home time and adventures together while he was away. 

Gulp. So cute. They started giving each other hugs this week. I'll catch either of them initiating it with the
other, and I even heard Joy say something that sounded like "hug" too.

During dinner the first night Josh was gone, I had stepped down the hallway for a moment to attend to another need, and I was beckoned back to the kitchen by sounds of vivacious giggles. As always happens, I missed the best ones while locating my camera to try and capture them, but here's a few for you to enjoy anyhow. ;o)

 Starting into her fish lips face...

 ...you've seen that one before.

Later, Deborah, a friend of ours from church came over to spend some time with the girls. Hope and Joy both love her, and it was nice to be able to tell Hope that Deborah was coming to give her a diversion while Daddy was away. :o)

Deborah stayed and read stories to Hope while I put Joy to bed, which was a help that first night Josh was away. :o)

Hope got a package in the mail from Granny that had some foam stars in it for her to imagine with. I hadn't exactly thought up what Hope would do with them, but no need to. She came up with a game on her own... all she needed from me was lids from the kitchen pots.

My sweet little helper. :o) She put all 60 eggs into cartons without breaking one!

This was after our adventurous outing to Costco, wherein we had to make a return trip home and then back to Costco again because unbeknownst to me, my debit card was not in my wallet, and I didn't have enough cash for the things on the list to buy. Thankfully, I discovered that as I was fishing for my Costco card before going in to the store. I was just going to have all the cards ready in my pocket.... trouble was.... they were in another pocket, in the sweater on my bed at home. :o) So, with Joy still intact and asleep in her carseat, we drove the 20 minutes back home, I went into the house and grabbed my cards and a snack lunch, and we drove back to Costco to do our shopping. WHAT A DAY! (this was the "adventure" part of the week.) Thankfully, both the girls love riding in the cart at the store, and like holding items we need and feeding each other snacks and water while they sit there.

Reaching for a specific storybook... :o) "I want yyyisss one."

Hope has such a sweet spirit. She loves helping Joy, and is quite willing and eager to do whatever she can to help out with Joy, such a getting Joy's orange off the table and giving it to her while I was fixing breakfast on the counter.

Enjoying some new story books before naptime.

Joy was up before Hope (normal occurrence), so I thought I'd let her try playing in the sink, since it was all set up from Hopey doing it earlier. Well... she had fun, and didn't mind getting wet. Even with the waterproof apron on, she still got fairly soaked... it's just her nature and her height! :o)

Next Morning:
Joy likes to feed herself, and sometimes does a neat job of it too.

As you can see, she also likes to praise herself for eating well, hence the clapping hands. :o) 

She was happily eating her bowl of oatmeal, so I dashed off to attend to a personal need with the thought "I wonder if she's gonna dump the remainder when she's done." Uhm - YEP! She did. Some on the tray, and the rest on the flor. And She took her bib off too, so... that was that. Glad I was doing laundry that day anyways! :o)

Yes Joy, Mommy will clean it up.

Likes raisins in her "warm cereal" this one does. :o)

Hope had been asking to be allowed to draw with the markers, so I let her go at it while giving Joy a snack. (Even though it is washable ink, I don't like the idea of Joy sucking on the open markers, so I don't often let Hope draw with the markers when Joy is around Joy.) Joy snacked for a bit and then I pulled her onto my lap... etc. :o)

This is just to document that we did it - we painted our toenails. All 30 the same colour. I wasn't going to bother with Joy's, but she was making known in very baby-talk ways, that she wanted just what Hope and I had, so on it went... and onto more than just her toenails, as you can imagine. :o)

Creative child. Pretzels are the latest craze around here. Joy arranged it in her mouth like this on her own while my back was turned.

Joy - SIT DOWN! (I say that about twice a minute at times such as this... She obeys, it's just she doesn't stay sitting for very long.)

"Me too Mommy..." :o)

And thus ended our week without Daddy. :o) He came home late that night while the girls were sleeping. Joy decided his homecoming should be celebrated by her having the worst sleep of her 13 month-old life... She was up 3 times before midnight, and again at 4:30 and 6:30, and though sweet Josh thought he'd help me out and put her back to sleep, she wanted nothing to do with him in the night. :o) Oh well. After the night comes the day and she liked him again then. Yay!!